Fifth Estate Collective

FE Bookstore

The FE Bookstore is located in the same place as the Fifth Estate and can be found at 4403 Second Ave., Detroit—telephone (313) 831–6800. The hours that we’re open vary quite a bit, so it’s always best that you give us a ring before coming down.

HOW TO ORDER BY MAIL:

1) List the title of the book, quantity wanted, and price of each;

2) add 10% for mailing—not less than $.59 (which is the minimum fee for Book Rate postage;

October marks the 63rd anniversary of the Russian Revolution. There will undoubtedly be military processions and official pseudo-celebrations to mark the date in the U.S.S.R., and boring, poorly-attended seances by various leftist sectlets here in the West. All of them, whether they represent Leninism in power (that is, Brezhnev’s “real existing socialism”) or Leninism out of power (the 57 varieties of Trotskyism, ° Maoism and Stalinism of the western parties), will be defending the mystifications of the monolithic machine which strangled the’ revolution in the name of the revolution, providing further examples of their prophet, Lenin’s unconsciously ironic and self-identifying remark that the revolution attracts the worst as well as the best to it.

The following books are a small contribution to the process of demystification of that event, a necessary step in rediscovering our activities, and hence renewing the struggle against all forms of domination.

BOLSHEVIKS & WORKERS CONTROL by Maurice Brinton

This is an excellent chronology and analysis of Bolshevik betrayal of the revolution from the seizures of the factories to the crushing of the Kronstadt Commune.

Black & Red $1.00

THE RUSSIAN TRAGEDY by Alexander Berkman

Cienfuegos $4.00

THE KRONSTADT UPRISING OF 1921 by Lynne Thorndycraft

Left Bank Books $.50.

MY DISILLUSIONMENT IN RUSSIA by Emma Goldman

(until they last—very few in supply)

Crowell $2.95

WILHELMSHAVEN REVOLT by Icarus

The story of the revolutionary Wilhelmshaven Commune in Germany in 1918 through 1919.

Simian $1.00

KRONSTADT 1921 by Victor Serge

Victor Serge is one of the untarnished moral witnesses of the revolution, and never lost his faith in revolution nor his dedication to the truth. This report, based on Serge’s personal experiences in Petrograd during the uprising, “describes an event in working class history concerning which Stalinists, Trotskyists and sundry others have indulged in a systematic campaign of misrepresentation and distortion. He shows how certain ideas concerning ‘the Party’ worked out in practice. The article also exposes the hypocritical pretensions of those who claim the struggle against the developing bureaucracy as some kind of private mantle.” (from the introduction)

Solidarity $.25

HISTORY OF THE MAKHNOVIST MOVEMENT (1918–1921) by P. Arshinov

Exciting story of the anarchist peasant revolution in the Ukraine, with telling revelations about the nature of “revolutionary” Bolshevik military and social policy.

Black & Red $2.50

THE UNKNOWN REVOLUTION by B. Voline

The little-told history of the revolution from the view of an anarchist participant.

Black & Red $4.00

* * *

THE OLD WAYS by Gary Snyder

Essays on ethnopoetics, reinhabitation, poetry, myth and the sense of place. “To combat cultural genocide one needs a critique of civilization itself.”

City Lights $2.50

WITHOUT A TRACE by Background GmBH

A “technical manual like no other,” this book covers the various areas of advancement in police technology in forensic science and criminalistics. But it is also a political’ book: “It speaks to everyone interested in knowing how the police operate, and where their technical limits lie.”

Partisan Press $4.95

STRIKE! by Jeremy Brecher

South End Press $4.95

ANARCHIST REVIEW 4 Cienfuegos Press

Cienfuegos 182 pp. (size 9 by 12 inches) $8.00

WARTIME STRIKES by Martin Glaberman

Tells the story of the struggle against the no-strike pledge in the UAW during the Second World War. “It is rare for history to provide so clear-cut and well-documented a contradiction. On the one hand, a majority of auto workers voted to sustain the no-strike pledge. On the other hand, a majority went out on wildcat strikes.”

Bewick Editions $6.00

We recently received a limited quantity of copies of two pamphlets published by friends of ours in West Germany, Vacation of Hegel: Latest Campaigns of Critico-practical Theory, and (in French only) Les habits nuefs de l’empereur: Regards sur la revolution orientale, a critique of the Iranian Revolution. We are offering them for $.25 to cover handling if they comprise part of a book order, or for $.75 to cover shipping(postage) and handling if you order them alone. The Vacation is not without its gems: “Today courage is all that is missing...Everyone faces misery, but the point is to end it.” As for the piece in French, everyone here enjoyed looking at the pictures, but none of us can read French enough to figure it out. We will consider for publication a review of it if anyone out there cares to send us one.

ARMED STRUGGLE IN ITALY: A CHRONOLOGY Various authors

Bratach Dubh 96 pp. $2.50

REVOLUTION OF EVERYDAY LIFE by Raoul Vaneigem

Black Beetle $5.00

CULTURE OF NARCISSISM by Christopher Lasch

Warner $2.95

ANARCHIST REVIEW 5

Includes Cienfuegos Press news, Some Thoughts on Organization, Anarchists in the Mexican Revolution, selections from Malatesta, Occult Authoritarians, Anarchists in Fiction, Libertarian Movement in the Netherlands, and more.

More than 120 pages of articles, photos, cartoons, reviews.

Cienfuegos Press $5.50

TELOS 43 Spring 1980

Articles: Antonio Carlo, “The Crisis of Bureaucratic Collectivism,” Theodor Adorno, “Music and the New Music,” Umberto Melotti, “Socialism and Bureaucratic Collectivism in the Third World.” Also of Particular interest, Carlos Castoriadis, “Socialism and Autonomous Society”: “Henceforth, the terms ‘socialism’ and ‘communism’ will have to be abandoned.”

Telos Press $4.00

BULLDOZER (August 1980, Vol. 1 No. 1)

This is a prisoner solidarity newsletter “produced and distributed from the stifling, capital intensive city of Toronto, Kanada by the Prisoner Solidarity Collective...We are all anti-state, anti-authoritarian, and definitely prison-abolitionist ...We are most interested in exchanges with any support group or prisoners’ group that is also putting out printed material.”

A pamphlet on the case of Carl Harp, I’M GONNA BE FREE, has just come to our attention. It is published by the Help a Prisoner Outlaw Torture Organizing Collective. Information on the collective and the case can be obtained from Hapotoc, van Limburg Stirumstraat 1, 3581 VA Utrecht, Netherlands.

BOOKSTORE NOTES

What is happening in Poland and in the rest of the Eastern Bloc?

POLAND: 1970–71 by Informations Correspondance Ouvrieres

This book provides excellent background information on the events in Poland, and describes the events of ten years ago there, when workers rose up in revolt against the state and the party bureaucrats. As in the recent strikes, the activities of the workers were set off by government austerity measures. It is particularly interesting to see where events have led this time around in light of the experiences of 1970 through 1971. “The cover picture of this pamphlet showing the blazing Communist Party headquarters in the Polish city of Sczcecin graphically illustrates what this pamphlet is really about: the hatred of the people for their rulers... Suddenly everything became quite clear: ‘An entire exploited class rose against a ruling class, Exposing the real social relations and shattering all mystifications... The rulers had only one alternative: to recognize that it was workers who were fighting for their material life and ultimately for their total liberation. The implicit recognition of the workers’ demands coexisted with brutal repression.’” (from our original review of the book)

Black & Red, 117 pp., $1.25

HUNGARY ’56 By Andy Anderson

“This spark of revolution was crushed only by the intervention of Russian tanks and after weeks of heroic resistance. These moments in 1956 exist not as memories of defeat, but as a beacon for what is possible.” (from the Fifth Estate, January 1979) “All workers, socialists, even communists, must at last understand that a bureaucratic state has nothing to do with Socialism.” (Nemsetor, 15 January 1957)

Black & Red, 137 pp., $1.25

We recently received copies of the latest issue of Namazu, from Japan, which is published in English by the Namazu Collective, 2-12-2 Asahimachi, Abeno, Osaka. “Namazu” means “catfish” in Japanese. According to legend, a giant catfish sleeps beneath the Japanese islands, and the earthquakes caused by its frequent stirrings are said to indicate heavenly displeasure with the authorities. Recent scientific experiments have proved the old folk belief that namazu can be used to predict quakes by observing abnormal behavior patterns among the fish. Namazu is free to anyone who writes to the collective, but they are in need of donations to pay enormous mailing costs. They ask for cash or international money orders only, no checks. This issue contains articles on the libertarian movement In Japan, nuclearism and anti-nuclearism, the rebirth of the Japanese imperial state, general tendencies of Japanese politics, and more. We have a limited number of copies which we will send out with the first few book orders that we receive.

We also received a copy of a Greek publication (in Greek) and the following letter: “Here’s a copy of our paper ANICHTIPOLI (in English, Open City) that is issued here in Greece every three months. We want to be in touch with libertarian and revolutionary issues all over the world.” The magazine is thirty pages, entirely in Greek, and contains articles on Pop Art, Warhol, R.D. Laing, and the MC5. (We know because we looked at the graphics.) For readers who may know Greek, a year’s subscription is $5 postpaid: Write Costas Mandilas, Thessalonikis 119, Petralona, Athens, Greece.

We also have quantities of libertarian and anarchist publications in Dutch, Swedish, French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish which we will include with book orders that specify what foreign language publications they would like to receive. If you are not ordering books but would like to receive these publications, specify which language and send a buck to cover handling and postage.

Cultural Initiative has opened up WW3, “a bookstore specializing in books and multilingual international publications on current struggles for Autonomy.” The store is located at 141 Allen St., New York, N.Y., 10002, 533–4144, and carries the Fifth Estate.

WORLDS: A POEM IN NINE PARTS by Maurice Greenia, Jr.

“Dreams form their own ideas. Dream ideas seize us as we sleep...” Maurice Greenia, Jr. is a local poet who has for the last several years passed out mimeographed sheets black with ink and filled with poems, some going right off the page, so urgent and unfettered are his explorations. Communiques from other worlds, innocent and mysterious, as well as trivial messages from the quotidian world, jumbled together as in the organic vision of hysteria, here and there flashes of genius and of silliness -Maurice is always worth reading, because he is a natural, and a primitive. Obsessive visions, huge and reiterated lists, bebop methedrine monologues, paranoia and ecstasy, system building and crystal palaces, mystic utopianism and chromosome jazz riffs, his poems are always convoluted, prayerful, almost rapidly monotone, cosmological.- Sometimes they are pointless, and wonderful. Other times they are terrible and you can tell that he has touched down to earth and is being too self-conscious.

Maurice has published a book, Worlds: A Poem in Nine Parts a triptych of “natural worlds,” “binatural worlds,” and “supernatural worlds,” a Divine Comedy which. starts from the east side streets of Detroit and ends up in Heaven, “where ABSOLUTE LOVE burns, sizzles and thunders...” This list of worlds within and without is similar to what he does in his handouts, also long obsessive lists. For Maurice the making of a list is like a stylistic ouija which moves across the paper in growing ellipses until it begins to write automatically. His poetry begins from the assumption that a cat walking across the piano keys in a probabilistic universe such as ours will eventually play Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations.

By exploring the different worlds and the different levels of reality, the merging of dream and action, fantasies, absolute motion, evil, past and present, and the beyond, Maurice is contributing to a process of linguistic utopianism which is poetry and which is taking place underground everywhere. Maurice takes seriously the heroism of a poetry which dares to state, “We close our eyes and are possessed. (and dreams beautiful dreams struggle daily to be made true...)” Some worlds that the book fails to explore, and which demand more explorers: utopian worlds & dystopian worlds, worlds of the future and the distant past, the world of the absolute present, other planets, night worlds, probabilistic worlds, speculative and logical worlds, novelistic worlds and worlds within those worlds, and others, still others, the sky is the limit! But his fantastic geography is a beginning, a foray into that universe which contains all worlds and non-worlds and yet more. As he writes, “All our created works are like shadows of the original heart’s picture.”

This work deserves recognition as a part of that process of discovery which will aid in opening the path toward human liberation: the world of desire. Included in the book are several beautiful collages by the author.

(Available from WORLDS, 202 Piper, Detroit, Michigan 48215 for $2.50)

—P. Solis

NOTICE OF REDUCED PRICES:

We have large quantities of the following books and therefore are selling them at greatly reduced prices. Ordering “sale” books (gasp) works as follows: your order must total $2.50 minimum and must include postage. The $2.50 can be reached by any combination of sale books or combined with books priced normally. Orders sent out will include a free copy of the Situationist pamphlet The Poverty of Student Life for as long as our supply lasts.

THE DOLLMAKER by Harriet Arnow

Set in Detroit in the early 1940s, this exciting novel should be read on two levels simultaneously. First of all, it is the story of one woman’s battle to preserve her humanity and the survival of her family in the face of migration from the rural south to the industrial north and the accompanying process of being crushed under the weight of the industrial system and urban decomposition. Secondly, her individual experiences of the characters mirrors the destruction of the peasantry and the creation of the industrial proletariat by the capitalist system.

Avon, originally $1.95, now $1.00

WILDCAT! DODGE TRUCK JUNE 1974 by ETR

An important early document in the development of the group which coalesced around the present Fifth Estate. Describes the wildcat strikes in a Detroit auto plant which brought the collective weight of the union, the company, the police and courts down on the workers, as well as a cloud of leftist flies who tried to take control of it.

Black & Red original. $.50, now $.25

PRISON MEMOIRS OF AN ANARCHIST by Alexander Berkman

Simultaneously a classic of revolutionary literature, prison writings, and personal memoir. “If people Will read this book carefully it will tend to do away with prisons.” (from the introduction)

Schocken, originally $2.95 now $1.50

AT DUSK: THE SITUATIONIST MOVEMENT IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

A situationist hagiography. “The imbalance of prevailing political, economic and cultural formations has resulted in a kind of social vertigo in which reality is in flux, and in which, therefore, everything is possible.”

Perspectives 1975 Orig. $1.00, now $.50

A WOMAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY by Emma Goldman

A protest by the famous anarchist activist against the repressive government policies of “denaturalization” of foreign born citizens in order to deport them for their political activities.

Cienfuegos original. $1.00 now $.50

COVER-UP LOWDOWN by Kinney & Mavrides

Names the names and rakes the muck! JFK’s Brain: Where Is It? Did the CIA Stamp Out Smokey the Bear? Oswald: Robot or ‘Rastafarian? Also, conclusive proof that you killed Kennedy!